Medical devices such as medical sensors are used both in medical institutions and at home to monitor one or more vital signs or to observe and record patient medical data. The medical data is transported to medical personnel who are often specialists and have the expertise to analyze the medical data and to prepare a medical report associated with the medical data. In some instances, the medical personnel use specialized systems, methods, test systems, expert workstations and/or software to aid in the analysis of the patient medical data and in the preparation of a medical report which analyzes the patient medical data.
To accomplish this, the medical data must be readily available to the medical specialists. However, often the patient and medical data are located in remote locations away from the location of an available medical specialist. One solution is for the medical specialist to travel to the remote location such as a remote medical facility, hospital, or doctor's office to gain access to the patient medical data and to analyze the report. In other cases, the medical data is obtained at the remote facility and shipped via mail or courier service to medical facility or medical specialist located at a remote location. However, these processes are both costly and time consuming and are not desirable when the timely analysis of the patient medical data is critical to providing timely medical care to patients who may have a severe or life threatening condition.
Additionally, there are systems for remotely monitoring medical data from a patient by a medical care provider. In one such system, U.S. Pat. No. 5,339,821, issued to Fujimoto, a home medical system allows any patient to measure his or her daily condition at home and undergo a check or an inquiry diagnosis by a medical specialist or doctor located at a remote medical facility. Other systems such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,544,649, issued to David et al., provide an interactive remote patient monitoring system. However, these direct transactions often are unreliable due to the insecure nature of the transmission, the large amount of data required to be transmitted, and/or the need to associate patient information with the patient medical data and subsequently with the medical report associated with the patient medical data. Furthermore, these systems are administratively challenging and do not provide for control and management of the access to and the analysis of the patient medical data by medical specialists.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a system and method of sensing and acquiring patient medical data at a remote location for analysis by a medical specialist who is located at a remote distance. Such a system would control access to the patient medical data by the medical specialist who performs medical analysis of the patient medical data. Based on the patient medical data, the medical specialist working at an analysis workstation prepares a medical report associated with the patient medical data. The medical report is selectively provided to the remote location for review and access by local medical personnel or by the patient.